Bidspirit auction | [Russian North] Carved Golgotha. Olonets–Volga

[Russian North] Carved Golgotha. Olonets–Volga region circle, Old Believers’ tradition. Russian Empire, early 19th century. Wood, high shallow relief carving, ground layer of gesso, polychromy. Dimensions: 45,5 × 33,6 × 2,4  cm. Condition: very good; wear to the projecting edges of the relief, local abrasions and minor paint losses down to the ground, light soiling in recessed areas; the panel with natural shrinkage cracks, without significant deformation, structurally stable. Rectangular panel icon with a straight, stepped recessed central area (kovcheg), with one transverse back brace and an old hanging ring on the reverse. The front is entirely executed in carved wood: in the center rises a tall eight‑pointed Golgotha cross, at its base a stepped hill of Golgotha composed of geometric triangular “teeth”, with a carved skull of Adam in a round medallion. On either side of the cross are the Instruments of the Passion – a long spear and a reed with a sponge. The borders and the space around the cross are filled with large relief Church Slavonic inscriptions indicating the tituli and attributes of the Golgotha cross. All relief elements are painted in an ochre‑golden tone and stand out against a warm red ground, creating an extremely restrained yet powerfully decorative image. The geometric rendering of Golgotha, the characteristic “stepped” treatment of the hill, the massive, generalized forms of the cross and the Instruments of the Passion, as well as the density of textual abbreviations, relate this icon to carved Golgotha crosses of the Old Believers’ circle of the Russian North of the late 18th – early 19th century and make it an expressive example of folk wooden icon carving from this region.